Previously posted on the FB group, 50 Phil Ochs Fans Can’t Be Wrong. This is another slideshow that grew out of my Phil Ochs two-person play project. Although he never appears as a character in my play, Phil’s father Jack was a doctor, one who apparently never fully recovered from his experiences as an army medic in World War II, and to some extent his struggles with his personal demons foreshadowed his son’s later difficulties. The parallels between father and son become a minor motif in the play and, for that reason, I decided to include this song, an early exploration by Phil in the art of topical songwriting, as well as a sardonic “celebration” of the American Medical Association. The song did not appear on any of Phil’s Elektra or A & M albums, but was released on the posthumous Here’s a Toast to Those Who Are Gone (Rhino 1986), and more recently on On My Way: 1963 Demo Session (Micro Werks 2010). In some ways the song seems remarkably timely, in that it at least touches upon the issue of who gets medical care, although in others it remains distinctly a product of its time. One might wonder, for example, why doctors were leaving for Canada in order to escape the looming spectre of socialized medicine in the United States? Apparently, medicare wasn’t formally instituted across Canada until 1966 (after a hard battle), and before that some anxious U.S. doctors—fearful of having to treat impoverished patients without what they considered to be adequate compensation—at least considered leaving their home country for the more financially lucrative free market pastures of our northern neighbor, although I am not sure if any actually did. The spokesperson in the AMA’s well-funded campaign against socialized medicine, by the way, was none other than Ronald Reagan, who even recorded an LP denouncing it in 1961 as part of what was dubbed “Operation Coffee Cup.” Phil youthful composition is a brief, peppy little number with a playful guitar lead (I’m not sure if this was Phil or someone else), and a rather arch delivery that prefigures some of Phil's better known works (e.g. “Small Circle of Friends”). Hope you like it.